No one may tread religion and international relations with dirty feet: Nazarbayev

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev spoke about harmful influence of religious intolerance and extremism on the country, Tengrinews.kz reports from the Forum of Scientists in Almaty. “Both religion and international relations are a science, no one may tread upon it with dirty feet,” the President said noting that research in these areas has to be brought to a new quality level. “That’s why, dear friends, let’s be alert in this matter, we need to prove extraneity and harmfulness of different forms of religious intolerance and extremism for our people and the country. Scientists should stand against the attempts to pull our society back into the past,” President said noting that “there are powers that don’t like peace and concordance in our common house”. According to Nazarbayev, there are many extremist trends in Central Asia and “Kazakhstan is also facing such manifestations”. However, the President thinks that there is no need to “see religious ways in everything and start thinking that something is on the raise in our country”. “Recent case in Taraz: it turned out that there was no religious underpinning there and that they were simple criminals, who used to commit crimes before,” Nazarbayev said. Earlier Tengrinews.kz English reported that Kazakhstan Education and Science Minister Bakytzhan Zhumagulov suggested to open the institute on research of extremism and terrorism. He noted that “there is a necessity for a research in this direction.”